Client:	dunnhumby Media
Deliverables:	dh Audiences application (v1.0)
Time:	Sep 2019 - Mar 2020
Team:	Product manager, UI designer, Engineering manager, 2 engineers
My role:	User Research, UX/UI Design

Introduction


dunnhumby Media tools help advertisers to grow Customer loyalty and enable retailers to monetise their own media. The retail media platform is powered by customer data science which includes many different targeting capabilities.

Problem space

The data science part of Media offerings includes different audience targeting approaches used in-house that are managed manually. In order to become more cost-efficient and provide faster services to clients, the process of creating targeted media campaigns should be automated.

Research

Since there was no initial consensus for the project among different stakeholders, I first held a product vision workshop to collect all ideas and assumptions from all available stakeholders. We used product vision canvas to map out and align on the overall vision, target users and their needs, as well as to list product ideas and desired business goals. This was used to form assumptions and to guide us through the user interviews for the product discovery.

Product vision canvas

Problems defined

• How to enable media planners to define targeting themselves since they have a knowledge gap and often need help from data analysts?
• How to define what are the internal processes that can be optimized by automatization?
• How to define the product scope since we differentiate between standard and customized targetings, and the data science has different methods of serving those?

Goals

• Standardize and productize current targeting offerings available in the company
• Enable internal users to generate targeting data on their own, without the help of data analysts
• In the long run, enable company clients to use the product

Target audience

• Internal users
  • Data analysts
  • Media planners
  • Campaign managers
• 
External users
  • Retailers
  • Product brands
  • Advertising agencies

User research and ideation

With assumptions formed, we created an interview script aimed at in-house users, with questions that cover general media campaign process and current use targetings. In total, the team consisting of 2 designers and one product manager interviewed 35 people in 5 different roles inside the company. Common pain-points and needs were discovered by synthesizing the interview notes into affinity map. Based on this, we created a user journey for data analysts, who became our main user focus. For deeper understanding, we also mapped the process of media campaign creation to better understand the dynamics between different roles involved in daily work.

Analyst user journey

Campaign creation process flow

Key Findings

The following findings were discovered during the research:

• There are differences in how targeted campaigns are run per different market
• There are too many possible communication points towards company clients
• Users would prefer to not be involved in daily manual chores and to have an automated place to create and obtain targeting files

Design and development

Together with product manager, we defined high level requirements to design specific scenarios, so we could validate some technical and UX assumptions about the features of the product. We designed a low fidelity prototype and ran usability tests with around 15 users in two iterations. The sessions were run remotely and conducted by us two designers and our product manager to ensure we always have two people attending the session. This helped to decide on the final set of requirements for the MVP, and enabled the UX team to start thinking about the UI design.

The design produced for the project relied on previously established global dunnhumby UI guidelines which I was a maintainer of, but we also introduced some new improvements such as new side navigation, step wizard and fluid grid layout. The development for the project relied on using the in-house component library which needed to be updated to accommodate all the changes that were required.

UI design of Audiences product

Project outcomes

• Project was developed within half a year, and product adoption across the company was rolled out. The next phase for this project will include the research on external clients and finding a way of turning an in-house product into SaaS.
• Setting aside three months to do a thorough product discovery and user research gave everyone involved more clarity and ensured that team members can focus on features that matter.
• On top of that, some more general inconsistencies in the campaign management process were discovered that forced the company to reexamine and improve ways of working.
• This project also served as a guinea pig in improving the product discovery process within the company, you can read more about it here

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Check out my other case studies:

• Increasing platform use with visual testing Sauce Labs
• Discovery for the in-house use product dunnhumby Media
• Designing a solution for querying data Memgraph Lab
• Building demo applications to help GTM motion Memgraph
• Finding product market fit for an early-stage idea Bunch.ai
• Product engagement optimization Powerlinx

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